1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a solid drug product supplying apparatus for filling solid drug products indicated by a medical prescription in a hospital, a drug store, etc. (hereinafter the solid drug products contain all the solidified drug products such as tablets, capsules, pills, troches, etc.).
2. Description of the Related Art
A solid drug product supplying apparatus which prepares prescribed kinds of tablets to fill prescribed tablets into a container such as a bottle or the like every kind has been known. The applicant of this application has proposed such a solid drug product supplying apparatus in Japanese Laid-open Patent Application No. 2000-98372.
Here, a solid drug product supplying apparatus will be described with reference to FIGS. 1 to 5.
First, the solid drug product supplying apparatus will be briefly described with reference to FIGS. 1 and 2.
FIG. 1 is a front view showing the solid drug product supplying apparatus, and FIG. 2 is a perspective view showing the solid drug product supplying apparatus.
The solid drug product supplying apparatus 1 stocks plural kinds of a large number of solid drug products therein, and supplies an indicated kind and number of solid drug products to a chute 6 at the lower portion thereof.
A partition plate 26 is slidably secured to the chute 6. Accordingly, the solid drug products supplied to the chute 6 are dammed by the partition plate 26 and temporarily trapped there.
Thereafter, a pharmacist or the like puts the mouth of a bottle to the outlet of the chute 6 and then slides the partition plate 26 to make the solid drug products thus trapped flow into the bottle.
The chute 6 is disposed on a recess portion 1a of the solid drug product supplying apparatus 1 to prevent the chute 6 from projecting excessively outwardly from the main body of the solid drug product supplying apparatus 1.
Next, the chute 6 will be described with reference to FIGS. 3 to 5.
FIG. 3 is a diagram showing a substantially cylindrical chute, and FIG. 4 is a diagram showing the partition plate 26. FIG. 5 is a diagram showing the chute 6 to which the partition plate 26 is secured.
The chute 6 is formed of a transparent hard synthetic resin, and is designed in a cylindrical form having a polygonal shape in section. The chute 6 is also designed to extend in an obliquely forward and downward direction.
As shown in FIG. 5, the partition plate 26 is freely detachably and slidably disposed at the front side of the outlet 6A at the lower end of the chute 6 (viewed from FIG. 5), and the outlet 6A is freely opened/closed by the partition plate 26. The partition plate 26 is inserted into a slit 6D formed at the front side of the chute 6 as shown in FIG. 3.
A magnet 26A is secured to the partition plate 26, and a sensor (not shown) comprising a magnetic switch is secured onto the lower surface of the chute 6 to detect the opening/closing state of the partition plate 26. By detecting the opening/closing state of the partition plate 26, after some solid drug products are supplied to the chute 6, next some solid drug products are prohibited from being supplied to the chute 6. In this case, when the partition plate 26 is once opened and then closed, the next solid drug products are allowed to be supplied to the chute 6. Accordingly, there can be avoided such a disadvantage that solid drug products are prevented from falling into the chute 6 under the state that other solid drug products are trapped in the chute 6.
The chute 6 is designed to be somewhat large in size in order to increase the content amount, and the lower surface at the tip thereof is tapered from both the sides thereof to have slant faces 6C. Therefore, even when the mouth of a bottle to be filled with solid drug products is small, the solid drug products can be filled into the bottle so that no drug product drops.
If the tip of the chute 6 is excessively tapered, the outlet of the chute 6 may be clogged with the solid drug products with higher probability. On the other hand, if the tip of the chute 6 is excessively large in size, the solid drug products may drop with higher probability when they are filled into a bottle having a small mouth.
The solid drug product supplying apparatus supports plural kinds of solid drug products, and those solid drug products are frequently different in shape, size and weight every kind. Therefore, it is difficult to design the tapered shaped of the chute 6 so that the filling of solid drug products is excellently performed at all times.
Therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide a solid drug product supplying apparatus which can prevent a chute from being clogged with solid drug products and easily carried out filling of solid drug products into a bottle having a small mouth.
In order to attain the above object, according to the present invention, a solid drug product supplying apparatus for supplying solid drug products to a container, is characterized by including: a chute for passing the solid drug products therethrough to the container; and a partition unit that is slidably secured to the chute to temporarily trap the solid drug products and allows passage of the solid drug products while the amount of the solid drug products passed is varied in accordance with the sliding amount of the partition unit.
In the solid drug product supplying apparatus, the partition unit has an opening portion through which the solid drug products are passed, and the opening portion of the partition unit is varied in area in accordance with the sliding amount of said partition unit.
In the solid drug product supplying apparatus, the opening portion of the partition unit is increased in area in accordance with the sliding amount of said partition unit.
In the solid drug product supplying apparatus, the opening portion of the partition unit is stepwise or gradually increased in area in accordance with the sliding amount of the partition unit.
In the solid drug product supplying apparatus, the partition unit has an opening portion through which the solid drug products are passed, and the lateral width of the opening portion of the partition unit is increased in accordance with the sliding amount of the partition unit.
In the solid drug product supplying apparatus, both the wall of the partition unit and the inner wall of the chute define an opening portion through which the solid drug products are passed, and the opening portion is varied in area in accordance with the sliding amount of the partition unit.
In the solid drug product supplying apparatus, the partition unit has a first partition plate having a first fitting portion, and a second partition plate having a second fitting portion which is fitted to the first fitting portion and slid interlockingly with the first partition plate when the first partition plate is slid by a predetermined sliding amount, and an opening through which the solid drug products are allowed.
In the solid drug product supplying apparatus, the opening is a notch extending upwardly from the lowermost end of the second partition plate.
In the solid drug product supplying apparatus, the solid drug product supplying apparatus supplies an indicated kind of solid drug products in plural kinds of solid drug products to the chute.